Abdel Aziz Odeh spent two Ramadans inside Israeli occupation prisons. He ate spoiled vegetables for iftar. He broke his fast standing in a prison yard while guards ran a headcount. He used toothpaste as a sweetener at suhoor because sugar was banned from the sections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now freed, Odeh describes in detail what the holy month looks like from behind bars: systematic humiliation dressed up as routine, starvation passed off as feeding, and the quiet ways prisoners fought to keep Ramadan alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Silence Where Family Should Be<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The hardest part was the stillness. Each evening as iftar approached, prisoners sat alone, picturing families gathered at home. The call to prayer sounded. No one was there to share the moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many spent entire nights in heavy silence, Odeh says. Grief folded into longing. Minutes stretched into hours of thinking about relatives living Ramadan without them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Food That Wasn’t Food<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Prison authorities served meals that were often inedible. Odeh describes vegetables pre-cut hours before distribution, left in the sun, exposed to insects. By the time the food reached prisoners, much of it had spoiled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fasting people depend on two meals: iftar and suhoor. The small, rotten portions fell far short of basic nutrition. Odeh says the way food was handled was not neglect. It was policy. The humiliation was built into the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not Knowing When Ramadan Began<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Prisoners sometimes did not know the exact start of the month. Isolation cut them off from news entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After mid-Shaban, they tried to spot the crescent moon through narrow windows or from behind bars. They ran rough astronomical calculations. During Odeh’s first Ramadan in prison, some prisoners missed the beginning altogether. They did not fast because they had no way to confirm the date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Iftar Delayed by Design<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Prison authorities frequently forced prisoners into the “count,” an inspection and headcount procedure, timed to coincide with the maghrib call to prayer. Prisoners could hear the adhan in the distance while standing in prison yards, waiting for the procedure to end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Iftar was pushed back by hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Odeh calls this a clear, intentional effort to strip prisoners of their most basic religious practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Small Tables, Big Spirit<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n They tried to build something resembling Ramadan anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prisoners pooled whatever little food each person had and spread it on a small piece of cloth to form a shared iftar table. This was forbidden. They did it regardless. It gave them back a fragment of what family felt like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They divided food among themselves, giving larger portions to elderly prisoners and those who were sick. They set aside food for prisoners being transferred between cells during iftar or suhoor. No one would go without.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Raids at Iftar<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Some of the worst moments came when prison forces stormed the sections during iftar. Guards unleashed police dogs inside the rooms, scattering the food prisoners had laid out. Tear gas was fired into the sections, causing severe pain to fasting prisoners. Beatings with batons followed. Some prisoners were blindfolded and moved to metal cages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The most anticipated moment of a prisoner’s day became the most brutal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suhoor: Sometimes Just Water<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Across two Ramadans in detention, Odeh managed suhoor with nothing but water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He calls it “the last test of patience.” Prisoners tried to save a small portion of food for the pre-dawn hours, but there was rarely enough. Sugar was banned from the sections. Some resorted to desperate measures. Odeh tells one story that captures the depth of deprivation: prisoners added toothpaste to their food for its sweet taste, just to feel, for a moment, something like dessert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Worship Against the Rules<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The restrictions did not kill Ramadan’s spirit. Odeh held sessions of prophetic praise chants after prayers inside his section. He was punished for it more than once. Prisoners who had memorized the Quran taught others to recite it by heart, especially after prison authorities banned copies of the holy book from the cells.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They organized small religious and cultural competitions with symbolic prizes. Anything to break the monotony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Message from Inside the Experience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Odeh closed the interview with a message to prisoners’ families:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I know the size of the pain you live with, because I lived deprivation the way my family lived it. I ask God to free all the prisoners and reunite them with their families soon.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n To the prisoners still inside: “Hold on to each other and ease each other’s burden. Relief is close, God willing.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Abdel Aziz Odeh spent two Ramadans inside Israeli occupation prisons. He ate spoiled vegetables for iftar. He broke his fast standing in a prison yard while guards ran a headcount. He used toothpaste as a sweetener at suhoor because sugar was banned from the sections. Now freed, Odeh describes in detail what the holy month …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1305,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[299,45,300,41,39,304,27,28,301,33,302,275,303,305],"class_list":["post-1303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-testimonies","tag-abdel-aziz-odeh","tag-human-rights-violations","tag-iftar-delay","tag-international-conventions","tag-israeli-prisons","tag-just-water","tag-political-prisoners","tag-prison","tag-prison-authorities","tag-prisoners","tag-raids-at-iftar","tag-ramadan-behind-bars","tag-suhoor","tag-worship-in-prison"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1303"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1306,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303\/revisions\/1306"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}